How to block alexa site audit
Operated by Amazon. alexa site audit was a web crawler operated by Amazon as part of the Alexa Internet service, which provided website analytics and traffic data. The bot collected information for analyzing site performance and ranking websites, but Alexa Internet was shut down by Amazon in May 2022.
How it identifies itself
Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; alexa site audit/1.0; +http://www.alexa.com/help/webmasters; )
nginx
In the server block, then reload.
# In the server block. 403 rather than 444: a closed connection tells the
# operator nothing, and an agent that gets a status code can log it.
if ($http_user_agent ~* "(alexa site audit)") {
return 403;
}
Apache
In .htaccess or the vhost.
BrowserMatchNoCase "alexa site audit" bad_bot
<RequireAll>
Require all granted
Require not env bad_bot
</RequireAll>
Cloudflare
Security → WAF → Custom rules.
# Security → WAF → Custom rules, action: Block (http.user_agent contains "alexa site audit")
WordPress
A child theme's functions.php, or a small plugin.
// functions.php of a child theme, or a small plugin. Runs before WordPress
// builds the page, so a blocked agent costs one PHP process and no queries.
add_action('init', function () {
$agent = $_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] ?? '';
foreach (['alexa site audit'] as $needle) {
if (stripos($agent, $needle) !== false) {
status_header(403);
exit('Blocked: alexa site audit');
}
}
});
A rule on the user agent is a rule on a string it chose
The server rules match on a header the requester sets, which stops the agent that says who it is and not the one that copies somebody else's name. Botscope verifies identity against DNS and published address ranges, records which check decided each request, and shows you the ones that lied.